Kent Academic Repository Full text document (pdf) Citation for published version Brittain-Catlin, Timothy (2016) Good Fairies. AA Files, 73 . pp. 121-128. ISSN 0261-6823. DOI Link to record in KAR http://kar.kent.ac.uk/58811/ Document Version Publisher pdf Copyright & reuse Content in the Kent Academic Repository is made available for research purposes. Unless otherwise stated all content is protected by copyright and in the absence of an open licence (eg Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher, author or other copyright holder. Versions of research The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record. Enquiries For any further enquiries regarding the licence status of this document, please contact: [email protected] If you believe this document infringes copyright then please contact the KAR admin team with the take-down information provided at http://kar.kent.ac.uk/contact.html Various 3 A Ship Called Patrick Hodgkinson Matthew Mullane 40 Hendrik Christian Andersen’s World Conscience Mariana Siracusa 48 Paul Otlet’s Theory of Everything Eva Branscome 58 Ship to Shore Nicholas Olsberg 73 Counter, Original, Spare, Strange Mike Dempsey 84 Man About Town Helen Thomas 88 Rudolf Schwarz and Another Kind of Modernism Thomas Weaver 94 Model-maker Grimm Jonathan Sergison 101 In Conversation with Alberto Ponis Timothy Brittain-Catlin 121 Good Fairies Fabrizio Ballabio & Alessandro Conti 129 Sentimental Education Marrikka Trotter 138 Ruskin’s Rocks Hans Frei 145 The Mathematics of the Shinohara House Gabriela García de Cortázar 154 Palladian Feet Ida Jager 165 The Brothers Kraaijvanger Alex Schweder & Ward Shelley 170 The Fourth Little Pig 172 Contributors 73 Various 3 A Ship Called Patrick Hodgkinson Matthew Mullane 40 Hendrik Christian Andersen’s World Conscience Mariana Siracusa 48 Paul Otlet’s Theory of Everything Eva Branscome 58 Ship to Shore Nicholas Olsberg 73 Counter, Original, Spare, Strange Mike Dempsey 84 Man About Town Helen Thomas 88 Rudolf Schwarz and Another Kind of Modernism Thomas Weaver 94 Model-maker Grimm Jonathan Sergison 101 In Conversation with Alberto Ponis Timothy Brittain-Catlin 121 Good Fairies Fabrizio Ballabio & Alessandro Conti 129 Sentimental Education Marrikka Trotter 138 Ruskin’s Rocks Hans Frei 145 The Mathematics of the Shinohara House Gabriela García de Cortázar 154 Palladian Feet Ida Jager 165 The Brothers Kraaijvanger Alex Schweder & Ward Shelley 170 The Fourth Little Pig 172 Contributors 73 aa Files The contents of aa Files are derived from the activities Architectural Association of the Architectural Association School of Architecture. 36 Bedford Square Founded in 1847, the aa is the uk’s only independent London wc1b 3es school of architecture, ofering undergraduate, t +44 (0)20 7887 4000 postgraduate and research degrees in architecture and f +44 (0)20 7414 0782 related ields. 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Publisher The Architectural Association For Further Information Visit aaschool.ac.uk Editorial Board or contact the Admissions Oice Mark Cousins aa School of Architecture George L Legendre 36 Bedford Square Joanna Merwood-Salisbury London wc1b 3es Irénée Scalbert Brett Steele The Architectural Association (Inc) Martino Stierli is a Registered (Educational) Charity No 311083 and a Company limited by guarantee Editor Registered in England No 171402 Thomas Weaver Registered oice as above aa Publications Editor aa Members can access a black-and-white and/or larger-print Pamela Johnston version of speciic printed items through the aa website (aaschool.ac.uk) or by contacting the aa Membership Oice Editorial Assistants ([email protected]/+44 (0)20 7887 4076) Clare Barrett For the audio infoline, please call +44 (0)20 7887 4111 Sarah Handelman Design A Note on the Display Initials John Morgan studio The display letters in this issue, again drawn by Adrien Vasquez from the John Morgan studio, appear within Gabriela García No 73, 2016 Contents de Cortázar’s essay on the battle drawings of Andrea Palladio. © Architectural Association Printed in the bright blue Pantone 072u of this issue’s second and the Authors colour, the letters are made up of cavalry igures in the style of Palladio’s illustrated edition of Polybius’ Histories, which the issn 0261-6823 architect worked on in the years immediately before his death isbn 978-1-907896-82-8 in 1580. (The work was never published, and the British Library holds one of only three copies in existence.) The Histories itself Printed in England was written c 140bc and ofers an account of the various Roman by Pureprint Group campaigns, including the defeat of Hannibal and the destruction of Carthage. These particular igures feature the Roman equites aa Files is published twice a year or cavalrymen and their mounts in regulated alignment and, Subscription for two issues like those by Palladio, are rendered to show the minutiae of their (including postage & packing) every helmet, lance, hoof and swishing tail. uk £32 (students £27) Overseas £33 (students £28) Single issues: £15 (plus postage & packing) Back issues are available aaschool.ac.uk/aailes Good Fairies Timothy Brittain-Catlin Not all school trips are miserable. One early summer, back in the up since to challenge it. The consistent message has been that the mid-1970s, a group of young urban teenagers lew by British Air- houses in this period were the culmination of cash and genius, ways helicopter from Penzance to the Scilly Isles for three or four especially in the case of Edwin Lutyens, who was lavish with both. days. We stayed in Hugh Town on St Mary’s in an actual hotel, Charles Latham’s much reproduced Country Life photographs of and no more than two to a room, leaving our classmates to their artistically contrived interiors reinforced the idea that Lutyens’ youth hostels and dormitories in North Yorkshire or Snowdonia, their bracing walks up hills to nowhere, their communal wash- ing up, their hideous freezing showers. Halfway into this unex- pected treat, my friend Nick and I took a boat out to Tresco to see the Abbey gardens and lost track of time. Towards 6.30pm it struck us that the return ferry was due any moment at the southern end of the island, and we hurried back, fearing we might miss it. But just as we rounded the inal corner, racing towards the pier, it steamed into view. We were not marooned. I still remember this as a pleasing moment of comfort, set within that lat and grassy landscape below the ruins of an old stone battery, the rocks and islands shimmering and spar- kling between the blue late-ater- noon sea and sky. Possibly one of the reasons that the experience sticks in my mind is that Nick’s father Alastair Service, having heard of my inter est in his book, Edward- ian Architecture and its Origins, not long aterwards sold me a copy at his author’s discount. Later he also gave me his Edward- ian Architecture: A Handbook to Building Design in Britain, 1890– 1914, in which he wrote a long and generous inscription. And thus, like most other people, I learned to look at Edwardian domestic architecture through his eyes, for 40 years ago Service provided the irst comprehensive overview of the period and nothing has come aa fiLes 73 121 houses, in particular, were intense set-pieces that could only be dis- Other studies, such as Clive Aslet’s The Last Country Houses, and cussed in terms of a hermetic formal beauty – a beauty destined to Edwardian Country Life, Helena Gerrish’s account of the garden shrivel as the Great War decimated the ranks of the housebuilders. designer and architectural editor H Avray Tipping, are unusual in Nearly all of Lutyens’ greatest houses were designed over the ‘long’ that both write about this period as if it was beset with moving and Edwardian era that runs between the late 1890s and the beginning memorable moments of personal experience or imminent threat. of the Great War. It is worth seeing the names and dates in succes- This is actually what makes both authors so convincing as story- sion to be reminded of what an extraordinarily productive period tellers, for it surely cannot be true that houses of this scale are reduc- this was: Orchards and Tigbourne Court were underway in 1897–99; ible to exercises in aesthetics and exhibitionist workmanship, with Greywalls and Deanery Garden in 1899–1901; Little Thakeham and so little engagement with the many other aspects of real life that Lindisfarne in 1902; Marshcourt in 1904; Lambay in 1905; Heathcote the housebuilders of the 1910s would have known. Real people are and the additions to Folly Farm in 1906. In 1909 he completed Great not that interested in architects; real people spend their lives trying Maytham, and in the following three years he started the design of to recapture the happiness they once knew or saw, even those leet- Castle Drogo, the Salutation in Sandwich, and then the astonishing ing sunlit moments; real people worry about life and death and bad extensions to Barham Court a few miles away, in which the narrow end health. If they can, they chatter about politics, or play at it, just as of a William-and-Mary mansion is made to rear up, creep down and they play about with motor cars and billiards; they try to invest their almost engulf a village lane – all this for a front door, a service wing money in projects that will represent the things that they believe and a billiard room.1 From the books and articles on these houses you in for a few years longer.